Mobile devices to outnumber humans this year

Charles Arthur

There will be more internet-connected mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets than people in the world before the end of the year, according to new research.

A growing category will be internet-connected monitors for "smart metering", video surveillance, maintenance, building automation, healthcare and consumer electronics – a class of device known as "machine-to-machine" (M2M) systems that communicate directly to other computers over the internet without the mediation of humans.

Overrun ... mobile devices are set to outnumber people in 2013. Photo: Andrew Quilty

The forecast by networking giant Cisco said the growth in the use of smartphones and tablets will see more than 7 billion – the world's current population – in use, with huge growth in use in Asia, the Pacific and Africa.

But the rapid growth in connected devices will put the existing internet infrastructure under increasing strain, and force internet providers to shift customers and networks over to the next-generation "IPv6" system, which expands the number of devices that can connect directly to the internet from around 4.3 billion (using the existing IPv4 system) to a gigantic figure large enough to give every single person their own private IPv4-based internet.

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Despite the near-exhaustion of the IPv4 address space in February 2012, progress towards wider use of IPv6 has been slow, said Trefor Davies, a driving force behind the adoption of IPv6 in the UK. "In the US, the government has mandated it in some areas, such as the US Navy, but the UK government seems to be concerned about costs," he said. The two protocols are incompatible, and updating systems used by internet service providers to offer a fully IPv6-capable system has put many off, Davies suggested.

But the Cisco report points to dramatic change that is already happening in the field of mobile connectivity:

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- Mobile video already makes up more than half of the data transmitted worldwide, the company said, and by 2017 it will make up two-thirds of it.

- The average amount of data consumed by smartphone users rose 81 per cent, from 189MB per month in 2011 to 342MB monthly in 2012.

- Smartphones consumed 92 per cent of global mobile data traffic, despite only making up 18 per cent of the handsets in use globally. The typical "featurephone" only consumed 6.8MB of data traffic per month – 2 per cent of the amount that the typical smartphone did.

By 2017, Cisco said, the average smartphone will generate 2.7GB of data traffic a month – almost a tenfold growth from today, and one that will put enormous demands on the internet backbone.

The rapid growth in 4G connections generated a 19-fold larger amount of data traffic than a non-4G connection, Cisco said. Despite only making up 0.9 per cent of all mobile connections – mostly based in the US – 4G connections already make up 19 per cent of data traffic, and the expected rise in such connections will contribute to huge increases in data consumption.

3G-connected tablets and laptops

The rapid growth in connected devices will put the existing internet infrastructure under increasing strain.

The number of tablets with 3G or faster connections rose from 14.4 million to 35 million, and each tablet generated 820MB per month – 2.4 times more data traffic than the average smartphone

There were 161 million 3G-connected laptops, generating seven times more data than the average smartphone – of 2.5 gigabytes per month (which itself was up from 2.3GB in 2011).

The fastest growth in device adoption over the next five years will be for tablets, Cisco said – predicting an average 46 per cent growth year on year, and data growth more than doubling, by 113 per cent annually. The next fastest growth will be in "machine to machine modules", which presently make about 5 per cent of internet-enabled devices, growing at 36 per cent annually, and seeing data traffic grow by 89 per cent compound.

Smartphones will see 20 per cent growth in numbers, it forecasts, while the data they consume will grow by 81 per cent. The majority will be "featurephones" with internet capability – typified by Nokia's Asha device, which can browse the web and send email but cannot load third-party apps (the latter being the definition of a smartphone used by research companies).

But after 2016, said Cisco, the number of featurephones in use overall will begin to drop for the first time ever as smartphones become a larger part of connectivity. "While Asia-Pacific and Middle East and Africa will still show a low single digit growth for non-smartphones, all other regions will experience a decline," the report said. "The highest decline will be experienced by North America (negative compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37 per cent) and western Europe (negative CAGR of 17 per cent)."

With smartphone penetration in the UK already at 58 per cent, and in the US at 54 per cent, the largest opportunities lie in China and Africa – where a number of companies are now pushing with their own smartphone offerings.

Growth in internet-connected devices

The rapid growth in smartphones, 3G- and 4G-connected tablets, dongle-equipped laptops and M2M devices will see the number of internet-connected devices outnumber humans later this year, it said.

Geographical growth

The fastest growth in data traffic will be in the Middle East and Africa, which will see a 77 per cent CAGR over the next five years, while the Asia/Pacific region will see 76 per cent CAGR and Latin America 67 per cent, Cisco said.